Chapter VIII: Part 8

Thus the action which, amongst the Romans and others of the ancients, was deemed virtuous heroism, has, by the selfish inventions of modern theology, been condemned as a deadly crime, and even stigmatised as cowardice, than which nothing can be more false and contemptible. But in every attempt to depict, in their true colors and direful effects, the evils generated by that canker, there must ever be a want of words to convey adequate force of execration. Such diabolical mockeries of humanity may be authorised by modern godism, but they were not approved by that of antiquity.

In a state of society so vitiated by falsehood and crime (created by an abandonment of Nature) as to be almost wholly made up of moral evil, is it at all wonderful that a vast portion of mankind should pursue the most criminal courses to obtain a bare and wretched existence? Can we then imagine any lengths to which a hireling clergy would not go in their routine of deception to secure for life riches, honors, ease and luxury? The knowledge of this truth alone ought to be sufficient to rouse men from their sottish lethargy, for it requires nothing but inquiry to make it appear that error and falsehood reduced to a system forms the groundwork of that overwhelming scheme of delusion which procures the above blessings for all priesthoods, who are hired and prostituted to defend deceptions which enrich them and impoverish industry. Could you, without an aberration of mind, expect truth from men who, in order to secure all the good things the world affords, make you their victims by forcing false notions upon your weak and pliant understandings in childhood? Well may they cry out, "Train up a child in the way he should walk, and when he is old he will not depart from it."* This is a correct aphorism, and is equally true whether applied to good or bad training, for if the mind be as it were mortgaged, or sacrificed to the priest in childhood,**--

* The spirit of priestianity may be, and is, repressed by
science and philosophy; but it is utterly unchangeable. The
children educated by the Druids to recruit their own ranks
were secluded in woods and caverns, and denied all
intercourse with their parents till after they had attained
fourteen years of age. By this mental monopoly it was
evidently meant that the esprit du corps, its secret ways
and interests, should be so indelibly fixed upon the mind as
to be ever afterwards proof against every natural affection.

** The more outrageous against Nature and reason the false
notions instilled in childhood are the more difficult it
seems to be to eradicate them. "It was said of an Arab, who
was a man of sense, an arithmetician, a chemist, and, what
is still more strange, a skilful astronomer, that nothing
could induce him to give up the belief that Mahommed put
half of the moon in his sleeve. The reformers of England had
more difficulty in giving up the 'Real Presence' in the
Sacrament, than in parting with any other dogma in Popery."
The impossible and the absurd are indispensable pre-
requisites with all religionists.

"Ere yet their minds, through tender age, can choose
What's for their good, or for their harm refuse.

Before their natures, and their wills are strong,
Justly to think, or judge of right and wrong;
Or how th' affections with the body grow,
The self-denying doom they undergo.

In blooming youth and innocence betrayed
To cursed altars, thus are victims made."

Hardly one in ten thousand of such victims will escape mental slavery for life. Moreover, men dedicated to sacerdotal delusion, are bound by strong necessity to maintain their deceptions, or else give up not only their ease and luxury, but their very means of subsistence. Once enlisted in the cause, they must defend it; for should anyone of them, prompted by convictions from impartial research and rational experience, honestly avow opinions hostile to the national superstition, or decline to administer in the usual manner to your nursery-conceived prejudices and errors, would you not abandon him to obloquy and starvation? These things duly considered, you may ask yourselves whether you are not more likely to meet with truth from men who neither seek your money nor court your favor--who are actuated by no other motive or interest than that which the love of the principle of truth excites--who are unprostituted by hire--who, under the armour of reason, can resist and despise the venomous calumny which is cast upon every exposure of priestcraft; and who, having discharged a duty, feel it as a matter of indifference whether you shall be pleased or offended by the truth. You complain that the contemner of your religious opinions, at once tortures your feelings and arraigns your judgment; but has any judgment proceeding from your impartial investigation of that subject, ever had anything to do in the matter? Did you not fall heir to those absurd whims which you are pleased to call religious opinions, in right of your mother and other relations; and if these had happened to be followers of Mahommed, would not your blind zeal for the prophet of Mecca, have been as great as it now is for his alleged predecessor of Palestine?* Your answering this question in the negative would be the highest proof of folly and stupidity. Having sadly experienced for more than half a century the obstinate and angry nature of superstition, we are prepared to expect anything but your approbation when we repeat to you, that your faith has no other basis than traditional fables, legends, and allegories--that your attempt to prove their literal truth by prodigies and violations of Nature's laws, is far more inadmissible than the fables themselves; and that your understanding is so obscured by the pestilential fogs raised by these theological absurdities, that the rational truths of Nature can find no admittance.

The usual reply to such arguments and reasoning as the foregoing, is the hue and cry of infidel, atheist, etc.; but is it atheism to prefer the known to the unknown, and to consult experience and the evidence of our senses, in preference to dogmas drawn from books of unauthenticated legends, which are remarkable for nothing so much as the numerous libels they contain against the ruling power of the universe?** When the laws and institutions of a country become so corrupted by the usurpations of religion, and the political tyranny which it engenders, as are those of Great Britain,*** where the most grievous abuses in church and state are cherished and perpetuated to serve the ends of the aristocracy and the hierarchy, and where even the sciences are allowed to be seen only through the spectacles of superstition, are the men Atheists who seek a radical reform of them all?

* The minds of the great mass of mankind may be compared to
the glasses in a tavern, which bear about whatever may be
put into them. If the tavern be in Turkey, the sensual
potations of Mahommed's heaven will fly about; if at Rome,
the sparkling froth of Catholicism: if in any one of the
Protestant countries of Europe, your features will be
distorted by the acetous draughts of Calvin.

** By one Act of Henry VIII., it was high treason to have
the Bible in possession; by another it was permitted to
noblemen and gentlemen; and next, to countesses, ladies,
etc.; and lastly to grown people, but not to apprentices and
children. It was wise to allow the reading of such a book to
those alone who were interested in upholding it. Reason,
philosophy and science will ultimately bring it into
contempt.

*** All the ecclesiastical, and most of the other laws of
Great Britain, are in opposition to everything that is
salutary to man, or protective of his natural rights. To the
former class, every man of sound morality and virtue, ought
to make a point of denying jurisdiction and obedience. All
the laws and usages, without exception, that have relation
to the intercourse of the sexes, are so unnatural, cruel and
absurd, that they seem calculated to make them mutual snares
for each other.

If there be indeed any such thing as a _post mortem_ judgment seat, to try the wicked and unrighteous for their immoralities and crimes, priests will have much to answer for at that tribunal, on the score of the complicated chain of calamities which their trade hath entailed on their brother man; for they alone

"Have dared to babble of a God of peace,
Even while their hands were red with guiltless blood--
Murdering the while--uprooting every germ
Of truth--exterminating--spoiling all--
Making the earth a slaughter-house."

As sanctioning precedents for the commission of almost every crime may be conveniently found in the Jew books, in like manner they hold forth examples of the coarsest obscenities, though false translation has hidden many of them. Where shall we find vices so lewd and unnatural as those which were practised, and seem to have been of ordinary occurrence, amongst the chosen people? Would the law relating to asses and he-goats have been made if the unnatural crime which it was intended to prevent had not been in practice? See in Judges xix. the infamous doings of the men of Gibeah and Benjamin, the descendants of the chosen son of Jacob. Would any man of ordinary decency read to the females of his household passages so outrageously--nay, so matchlessly obscene, as those we frequently meet with in the Bible? For instance, Ezekiel iv., 12, and nearly the whole of the chapters xix. and xxiii. of the same book. See also Hosea i., 2 and 3, and chapter iii. to the end. The Song of Solomon is evidently the lascivious* effusion of some devoted debauchee; yet such is the transcendent impudence of our priests, that these superlatively lecherous imaginings have been, by forged headings, called "Christ's love** to the church." The instances above cited are trivial when compared with the number which might be adduced, of obscenities altogether unequalled in any other book; and we would ask any Bible advocate, "Whether any young woman who should be detected in reading a book (not labelled The Holy Bible) which contained a fiftieth part of the foul and rank immodesties that pervade this 'Will of God,' would not lose her good reputation for ever?"

* In chapter v., 4, it is very significantly said, "my
beloved put his finger, etc.;" but to damp this plainly
libidinous expression, the inspired translators foisted in
"of the door". No forgery can be more barefaced. The words
are "Dilectus meus demittebat manum suam a for ami ne, cum
visceribus meis frementibus in me." There is no mention
whatever of a door.--Lucian Redivivus.

** If they would call them typical of the Duke of York's
love for Mrs. Clarke, they would be much nearer the truth.

*** At a trial in London, for the imaginary crime of
blasphemy, the judge very ingenuously acknowledged the
revolting obscenities of the Jew books, by ordering the
women and boys to leave the court while the defendant, in an
able defence, was reading the Bible.

But these obscenities are of little ethical importance, compared with the mass of moral evil which in all ages of Christianity has arisen from, and been justified by precedents drawn from the conduct of those men called "Bible worthies," though they appear decidedly to have been the very worst characters portrayed even in that book. This is not surprising, when we know that the Jewish god was an abstract personification of the will and interests of the robber-in-chief, combined with the priesthood; and the interests of all priests being essentially different, or opposed to those of the industrious producers of wealth, the men who oppressed and plundered them, and stuck at no crime in serving the sacerdotal order, were of course the favorites of "the Lord." David afforded a full and prominent proof of this. Hickeringill, a learned Hebraist and clergyman of the English church, has let out the secret, that "David was a man after God's own heart," not in holiness, that is not meant, and would be unaccountable after his adultery, murders, his many other sins, and cursing his enemies to the lowest pit of hell; but, "after God's heart," is a Hebraism,* and in English signifies as much as, "_a man for my turn_" (or he is the man for my money), "_he will kill and slay as the priest commands and directs_."

* One of the most learned Hebraists of England, has declared
that, no two translators would agree in rendering any verb
from the Hebrew. Godfrey Higgins says:--"I am quite certain
that I shall be able to show--to prove--that every letter of
the Hebrew has four, and probably five meanings." What an
accommodating language for the priests, when their interests
require an alteration in their "Word of God!"

Here we have an exceedingly important confession from a learned churchman! That a person so profligate, wicked, and cruel, as the whole life of David shows him to have been, should acquire the above title, has no doubt astonished many people; but the exposition shows clearly that the priests bestowed it upon him, for his pre-eminence in the commission of every crime that promoted their interest and power. Many others of these "worthies" appear to have been the peculiar favorites of Jehovah, from possessing similar qualities (saints in subsequent times were always made out of the same sort of material), whilst with the good and virtuous few he was generally at enmity. This appears in contrasting the bloody and revengeful character of priest Samuel, with that of the plain, honest, and brave soldier, Saul; that of the cunning and deceitful Jacob, with his generous and amiable brother Esau. Amongst the numerous atrocious murders of David, do we not find that of Mephibosheth, the lame son, or brother of his peculiar friend and generous protector, Jonathan? The wholesale murders ordered by Moses, Joshua, David, and some others, are, if true, the most horrid imaginable. Blood was the order of the day among the Jews, so it flowed on all occasions. Exod. xiii., 2, shows that by their laws the first-born children were dedicated as sacrifices to the Jewish Moloch, as well as the first-born of other animals; but it is probable that the horror which this shocking barbarity excited in surrounding countries, at last induced the priests to accept of a lamb, or other victim that was equally good to eat, in redemption of the devoted child. The poor donkey, being rather a tough morsel for "the Lord" and his priests, was to be put to death, if not redeemed by something more tender and savory; mark the malignity of the priests! That the Jews offered such human sacrifices, is proved in Solomon's having built a temple to Moloch, which he would not have done with the intention of observing any other rites than those of the Ammonitish god. The Jew books have also furnished Christianity with examples of private assassination, which are nowhere else matched in cool atrocity: to give two instances only, see the base cowardly treachery by which those of Sisera, and of Eglon, king of Moab, were perpetrated.

We cannot conclude this lecture without making the important observation, that, while the instruction of youth continues to be founded upon these Jew books, which hold forth such barbarous and vicious men as patterns of humanity, virtue, and sound morality, no material improvement can ever be made in the moral condition of society. These books are imposed upon the mind as the one thing needful in education, because they divert from the study of the useful and salutary truths of Nature (the knowledge of which is the bane of the priest), which stand in direct opposition to the fabulous absurdities of Jewish theology;* and, therefore, our hireling priests, who dread nothing so much as the development of these truths, use their utmost energies in suppressing all such investigation; whilst they instil such reveries only as promote ignorance, and keep the mind in childhood through life. When the fogs of religious stupidity have thus mentally moulded the audience, the pulpit becomes a fountain of the most unqualified nonsense, which is safely showered down in torrents without any danger of detection, on the part of "the long-ear'd rout," who, being taught to spurn the evidence of their senses, when put in competition with faith, are prepared to swallow the grossest impossibilities:--

"For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."

* The caricatures (they do not deserve a better name) which
the Jews followed by the Christians have drawn of the
Supreme Power, are extremely disgusting to rational piety;
they make their deity command theft and murder: he avowedly
breaks his promise (Numb, xiv., 34). He grieves and repents
of his past conduct (Gen. vi., 6). He prompts his prophets
to lying (1 Kings xxii., 22).

The theology of the present day, says D'Holbach, is a
subtile venom, calculated, through the importance attached
to it, to infect everyone. By dint of metaphysics, modern
theologians have become systematically absurd and wicked, in
teaching the odious ideas they entertain of the deity.

The imagination of the bewildered bigot fears a mysterious phantom which acts on none of his senses; and he fears nothing so much as to have nothing to fear. If his religion was clear to human intellect, it would have no attractions for his ignorance; there must be obscurity, incredible prodigies, fables, sorceries, and terrors, to keep his perverted brain in perpetual dread and agitation. By such chimerical apparatus, the priest can reduce the mental faculties of man almost to annihilation, and hence it is that the great herd of human beings have hitherto been mere congregated masses of variously compounded folly, knavery, and credulity; where ignorance is prized and cherished as the sole medium through which clerical and secular oppressors can ride over the necks of the multitude;* while the spider's web of superstition confines their intellects as it were within the bounds of a nutshell. In this way are the whole nations of human beings educated under traditional and legendary lies and fables; yet so firmly does the false impressions instilled in childhood rivet them upon the mind, that myriads have died for them, as the highest service to their "God!" _This is a species of devotion which the theologues most willingly perform by deputy_.

* "In every age, and in every country of the world, the
religions that have been invented by impostors and priests,
and sanctioned by rulers, have been put forth with no other
intention than that of deceiving the people; whilst the
distinguishing characteristic of all religious professors
has been to profess one thing and mean another."

Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole fabric of Christian priestcraft. In the present century, that light, guarded by the true emancipating Savior of the human race, the printing press,* is now becoming more widely diffused and clear, through the erudite minds of a Brougham, an Owen, a Hume, and many other advocates of education; but still the truths of Nature are so obscured by the dense fogs of priest-fostered ignorance, that no efficient political relief need be expected for Christendom, until the people reform themselves by abandoning the evils which cause their physical and mental intoxication; these are inebriating liquors, and grovelling superstition.

* Though the art of printing, so as to multiply the copies
of a document to any extent, was known in Europe in the year
1444, yet the control and fear of priestly vengeance,
prevented its being extensively useful for two centuries
afterwards. This art, nevertheless, had been known and
practised from time immemorial by the priests of Buddha,
throughout the immense empire of Thibet, though confined by
them exclusively to the purposes which promoted the
interests of their religion. Oh, how rejoiced the priests of
Christianity would be at this day, were it in their power to
establish a similar monopoly of the printing press!--See
Higgins' Anacalypsis.

When our present ultra-Reformers, who call themselves Chartists, prate of church-going, and offering up prayers and religious hymns, previous to their vain consultations, our political rulers pass the wink to their clerical confederates, conveying as much as to say, this is all very well; for while these men continue under the thumb of any sect of theologians, or suffer their minds to be deluded and debauched by any scheme of supematuralism whatsoever, real knowledge and sound judgment must be strangers to their meetings; whilst the animosities of sectarism must ever prevent unanimity, without which they never can be formidable to the powers that be, however corrupt. When the education of mankind shall be so salutary as to teach them what they are in reality, the reform necessarily springing from it would quickly dissipate ignorance, conquer superstition and its priests; and, in place of pretending to look beyond Nature, whose surface alone man is hardly capable of perceiving, he would, through the evidence of his senses, follow that unerring power as the only polestar of his happiness. For the great majority of human beings thus to reform themselves, "they have but to will it;" if they will not, they deserve to continue what they ever have been--degraded outcasts and aliens from their nature.

Thus with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
NATURE, and TRUTH, and LIBERTY.--Shelley.

END OF LECTURE SIXTH.

DIALOGUE. PHYSIOLOGICAL AND THEOLOGICAL

Thou, Nature, art my goddess: to thy law my services are bound.
--Shakspere.

"Philosophy teaches us to seek in Nature, and the knowledge
of her laws, for the cause of every event; when this
knowledge shall become universal, man will relinquish, with
elevated satisfaction, his attachment to supernatural and
vindictive theology." It is this theology that has destroyed
the harmony of Nature, and demoralised the intelligent
world.

LUCIAN AND MODERATUS.

MODERATUS.--In all ages of the world, the tide of human affairs hath shown that reigning opinion, however ill-founded and absurd, is always queen of the nations; and, since a man's interest and general good footing in society, are, to a great extent, involved in his acquiescence in these opinions, it is strange that you, Lucian, should venture to entertain heresies so much at variance with everything that is called orthodox. But as it is only upon hearsay that I judge of your opinions, pray let me know from yourself your notions respecting the deity?

LUCIAN.--You must first define precisely and intelligibly, what you mean by the terms deity or god: do you mean by either of them to designate a fanciful personification of the physical powers of universal matter or nature?

Mod.--No; I mean that infinite, eternal, incorporeal body in the human form*--the creator of the universe out of nothing, that is, out of himself, he being nothing, according to Christian orthodoxy.

* Zenophanes observed, that if the ox or the elephant
understood sculpture or painting, they would not fail to
represent the Deity under their own peculiar figure. In this
they would have as much reason at the Jews and Christians,
who gave him the human form.

"And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith
Nurs'd by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon."

LUCIAN.--I can form no conception of such a being as you describe; but such a phantasm may be very suitable for, as it is quite of a piece with, a religion that is made up of chimeras. If your term nothing has any meaning, it is the negation of matter, which is nonsense, because the mind can form no conception of immaterial existence. By the same rule, reason and common sense reject the word spiritual, because it is a term absolutely without meaning, and represents no existing thing of which the mind can possibly form any idea.* All these words have been coined in the mint of theology for the purpose of deception; and, together with the principal tool of priestcraft, called soul, make up the machinery of delusion. Everything rational is foresworn by a set of mystagogues, when they declare that their God was engendered before his mother, and is of the same age as his father!

MOD.--But laying aside these foolish inventions, which could only be imposed upon ignorance; and allowing that, to the question, "what is god," no proper answer can be given, but that "we do not know;" still, if all, or universal matter was created, it must have had a creator; and there being no materials to work with, this creator, being himself immaterial, must of necessity have created matter out of himself, that is, out of nothing.

"These were Jehovah's words:
From an eternity of idleness,
I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man;
I placed him in a paradise, there
Planted the tree of evil; so that he
Might eat and perish."
And so says the church.

* Spirit is literally air, and air is matter in a gaseous or
fluid form; but this is not the sense in which the word is
used by the theologian.

LUCIAN.--That is going still deeper into theological absurdity. No axiom can be clearer than this,--"out of nothing cometh nothing." There could be no creation of that which necessarily and eternally exists in and of itself There can be but one infinite being, one nature, i.e. the boundless universe, (call it god, or by any other name you please) and this all-in-all self-existent being, produces in itself, by an internal or innate action, whatever changes matter undergoes by this essential action or motion; whether in the production of living creatures, or inanimate forms: thus universal matter is at once both agent and patient--efficient cause and subject; it produces nothing but what is its own modification. Spiritualism is supported only by fraud, and ignorance of materialism.

MOD.--Are not the words creator and creation used in the Bible? what do they mean?

LUCIAN.--The learned confess that we have a very false translation of that book. In the Talmud of Jerusalem, creator and creation merely signify the giver, and the act of giving forms to matter* There is not one word in the Bible about a creation from nothing; this notion, according to Mosheim,** was the invention of the Christians. All identities of matter arise from motion alone; and as no portion of it can ever cease to be in motion, that motion is perpetually destroying existing forms, and out of these producing fresh identities of matter; but this is change of form alone, and chemistry has proved the self-existence of the material principle, in the demonstration that no particle of it can be annihilated.

* The word Tsour has been adopted in Genesis, where it is,
say the learned, falsely translated creator, though it
merely signifies, "the giver of forms." According to Volney,
that name is also one of the definitions of Osiris.

** Appendix to Cudworth.

MOD.--In our Bible account of the creation, there are certainly some apparent contradictions, or incongruities, such as the getting up of three whole days before the sun was "made and set in the firmament;" now it appears to us that, as the sun is the sole source of day, they were a little preposterous in forgetting to make him first.

LUCIAN.--It must appear plain to every one not blinded by his slavish fears and prejudices, that the writer of Genesis (the cosmographical part) was entirely ignorant even of the rudiments of natural science. The god he set up, and the handiwork he makes him perform, are proofs of this. The Jupiter of the pretty and lively mythology of the Pagans, was frequently engaged in ludicrous amours;* but in general he preserved an awful dignity, and was never represented in the discharge of those mean and servile offices, which the Jews depict their Jehovah as performing; though these were nothing to the ferocious, cruel, and disgusting caricatures which are everywhere drawn of him in their books. Allowing for a moment the possibility that poor deluded man can be guilty of impiety towards the all-ruling Power, certainly his mind could not devise anything more blasphemous than to personify that power into such a deity as that set up by Moses. Ignorance of the operations of matter or Nature, has made man invent deities as causes of the effects he sees produced; these deities were so many chimeras, and these chimeras have been the basis of all religions.

* When Diagoras of Melos declared that there were no such
beings in existence as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, etc., their
priests offered a talent for his head, or two talents if
taken alive. In the latter case, the higher sum was probably
offered, that they might have the pleasure of torturing him.
In the 15th century what would Christian priests have done
to the "blasphemer," who would haye been so impiously wicked
as to assert, that the above gods did still exist in full
power? Priests are ever the same; but gods change names and
wills, going in and out of power, like Whigs and Tories.

MOD.--I confess that in the all-important matters of morality, the Bible presents exceeding great difficulties. Truth, justice, and mercy are immutable principles, and must not be subverted to uphold any system of religion whatsoever. That which is cruel and wicked in a man, cannot be admitted or defended in a god; and every moral feeling of the virtuous mind must be discarded ere we cease to doubt the truth of a religion based upon the desecration of these principles. Besides, it is repugnant, if not impossible to reconcile the god of Moses with the reverential and sublime idea, which superior minds are capable of forming of the almighty power.

LUCIAN.--As the man who takes a priest for his guide will be led astray; so, if the Bible has been his sole instructor, he is likely ever to remain in ignorance; the first will not teach him anything useful--the latter cannot. Previous to the time when it is said the Bible lawgiver entered upon his murderous invasion of the Canaanitish countries, each of them had its local god or goddess, some of whom we have elsewhere mentioned; these were so many personifications of the sun, moon, stars, elements, and seasons, and served as objects of adoration amongst the ignorant. As a priest of Heliopolis, Moses must have known all this, and wishing to be like his new neighbors, he set up his barbarous deity in imitation, changing his Theban name of Jahouh into Jehovah (see Strabo's Geography), charging his followers not to represent it by any emblem, as he was in vain wishful of preserving the Egyptian unity of the Supreme Power. But as the sun was then in Taurus, or the Bull, the Egyptian priests had taught the illiterate Israelites to worship a calf; and as they were desirous of clinging to their calf adoration, Aaron, as every other priest would have done, took advantage of this religious folly, to despoil them of the gold ornaments, which, by Jahouh's command, they had swindled from the Egyptians. In this affair Moses and his brother, no doubt, understood each other well. To rob upon religious pretences, is not altogether a modern invention.

MOD.--In the supposed time of Moses, the religion of Egypt being polytheistic, Jahouh must have been one amongst many deities that were worshipped by the Egyptians; so that if Moses borrowed that deity of the Thebans, he could not at the same time borrow his doctrine of the unity of god.

LUCIAN.--The learned Egyptian priests appear to have been decidedly Materialists. Infinitely above the minor deities which they invented for the ignorant populace, they believed in the great material principle,* acting by self-existing energies and properties; infinite, therefore causeless; and constituting the unity of the Supreme Power. They represent this power by no emblem, conceiving that to be impossible; but the Greeks personified it in the god Pan. Thus the unity of the Supreme Power was the basis of the hierarchical religion of Egypt, as is acknowledged by the learned Hyde, and also by Cudworth. As an Egyptian priest, Moses (admitting his existence) must have known this, and was therefore wishful of preserving this unity in his Theban deity; though that availed nothing when neutralised by the discordant and inconsistent qualities attributed to him. In order to be justified as an invader and plunderer of peaceful countries, Moses was under the necessity of endowing his god with fierce and barbarous passions, which on most occasions led him to be cruel and unjust; as when he issued his ferocious and bloody mandate to his priests, the sons of Levi, (Exod. xxxii., 27) to sacrifice about three thousand "_Brothers, companions, and neighbors_," in cold blood,* You say, "materiality cannot think--do you know of any thinking without it? Pray how does immateriality think?"

* See also the inhuman mandate issued in Deut. xiii., 6th
to 10th. This has justified every refinement in the cruelty
of persecution throughout Christendom for more than fifteen
hundred years.

MOD.--That massacre was caused by the idolatry of the people, in setting up and worshipping the golden calf.

LUCIAN.--Priest Aaron was herein the principal actor; yet he and his tribe not only go unpunished, but are employed to commit the shocking murders.

MOD.--But theologists assure us that what is justice with god is injustice with man. Christians have ever drawn a line of distinction between divine and human justice: proving that what appears to man cruel, partial, and unjust, in the works of god, are, in reality, justice, impartiality, and mercy towards man.

LUCIAN.--Robbery and murder are strange ways of showing mercy. It is by the hideous and pernicious dogmas you mention, that pretended supernatural revelations have poisoned the pure stream of morality; they utterly confound every idea or perception we can have of the natural principles of right and wrong; and have sanctioned or justified the foulest enormities throughout Christendom. The principles of truth, justice, and morality, are ever the same, and immutable from whatever source they emanate.

MOD.--It is true that the Supreme Being is, upon the whole, not much beholden to the Jewish priests for the sketches of character in which he is portrayed in the Bible. But this is speaking according to human reason.

LUCIAN.--The capricious and cruel character of this theological creation, as set forth in the Jew books, is generally so demoralising as to be altogether unworthy of imitation in human conduct, The cruelty ascribed to it, is the shield behind which priestcraft has sheltered itself in all its bloody persecutions. In other respects the various menial, or bad offices and functions which it is made to perform, are truly ludicrous when said to be executed by the all-ruling power; such as, a god-midwife (a), a nightly assassin (b), a butcher (c), a barber (d) a slave-dealer (e), a murderer (f), a fool (g), a deceiver (h), a promise breaker (i),* a deluder (j ), a tailor (k), a shoemaker (l). Such was the deity who the Jewish priests impiously and blasphemously called the Supreme Power of the universe, though guised by them in the form and likeness, having all the appendages and members physical, of the human body; and possessing many, if not all the worst passions incident to human nature. And such is the deity adopted by Christianity, after undergoing such modifications, and receiving into partnership such colleagues as suited the interests of his priests. These things, in a mental point of view, have degraded man below the more rational animals of the field.

* The Jewish god never gave his chosen people anything
better than promises.--Vide Acts vii., 5; and Heb. xi., 39.

In the reign of Ahab, a lying angel, or spirit, offers his
services as a deceiver, which services were very acceptable
to the "Lord." Here we have a lying angel, and the supreme
being endeavoring to deceive by prompting to a falsehood.
The belief of such impious absurdities shows that the
unbounded credulity of man is the safety of the priest.

MOD.--You have evinced a strong partiality for what you call the pretty and lively mythology of the Gentiles, consisting of the numerous fabled gods and goddesses of antiquity, which, you say, the lower orders of the people were taught to consider as so many real personages, though, in the esoteric doctrines of the initiated, they were merely so many emblems of the "host of heaven," the elements and seasons.

LUCIAN.--Precisely so; and such is the origin of the Christian scheme also, springing as it does out of the Egyptian and Zoroastrian systems; for as the epithet Christ physically signifies the sun, so, in like manner, has it been made to represent a fabled personage; whilst the true revelation of this prosopopoeia (the figure by which things are made persons) is now suppressed or lost through priestcraft, or its foster-child, ignorance.

MOD.--In modelling his deity it was evidently the intention of Moses to preserve his unity; but his followers being the most barbarous of human beings, he was under the necessity of adapting his god to their ignorant and rude notions of things; and, therefore, not blameable for the tricks and deceptions he used, since these were the only means of governing them. Why, then, should not similar means be used in the nineteenth century to answer the same purpose? The ignorance and credulity of the mass of mankind are at all times the sufficient warrant of theological frauds. It is not at all necessary that men of learning, and the rulers of nations, should believe in the irrational fictions of any scheme of supematuralism; but experience seems to point out the utility of their yielding them _a pretended belief, and a real support, for the sake of governing the multitude_.

LUCIAN.--As an initiated Pagan priest, the conduct of Moses towards his followers was quite in character; and the religion which he manufactured was, no doubt, well suited to the extreme savageness of the Jews.* But it is wonderful that this religion, blasphemous and absurd in the highest degree, and contrived solely for the purpose of over-awing and governing a horde of plundering banditti, should maintain a sacred influence over nations where history and science abound. The grovelling credulity of uninstructed man is such, that all despotic rulers, aided by their iniquitous connexion with subservient priesthoods, have during centuries of darkness, shackled the necks of mankind with great success in the way you mention. But the wicked stratagem of keeping men in ignorance, in order that they may be misgoverned by theological fables, is now meeting a stumbling-block in the increasing light of reason and useful knowledge among the people. This wretched policy has already produced revolutions; and others of yet brighter aspect seem rising on the political horizon, still farther to weaken, and ultimately to overthrow, the church-contaminated governments of Europe. Superstition, though still leagued with political rule, is utterly unable to be its mainstay any longer, because of the reasonable hostility of the people whose eyes begin to be opened to the evil tendency in regard to morality, as well as to the prodigious expense entailed upon industry, in support of the voracious hydra of superstition.

"An inhuman and uncultured race, who
Howl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God'."

* To establish a religion upon the wild reveries of an
ignorant people, whose legends are in all cases filled with
miraculous events against the order of Nature, and bearing
on their very front the most glaring marks of imposture, is
the very acme of human folly--the pestilent mania which has
convulsed nations, and deluged the world with blood.

MOD.--That all rational and unprejudiced minds find an insuperable repugnance at the idea of reconciling, or identifying the Supreme power, with the deity of Moses, as depicted in the Bible, is a point which I readily concede. When the man of free reflection meditates on a boundless universe, governed in the most consummate order and harmony, nothing appears to him so shocking as the impious comparison of the incomprehensible Being, the creator and ruler of millions of worlds, with the impotent, puerile, and inconsistent deity of the Jews--the contrast is, beyond all expression, revolting and abhorrent. This immutable order of all things (we are forced to the conclusion) could not exist without the guidance of an infinite Being who is not only independent of matter, or Nature, but regulates that principle.

LUCIAN.--Matter and motion alone constitute what we call Nature, which, you allow, is the essential principle, therefore, there is no room left for supposing any anterior existence; because, as the essential principle, it could have no antecedent--no cause; and must in consequence be self-existent and eternal. If invariable order and harmony evince the design of an artificer, surely the transcendent intellect of your supreme artificer (the demiourgos) evinces still more the necessity of a greater designer, in his production. We know that harmony and adaptation exist in the energies of matter, from which spring all animal organization; is it not then quite as satisfactory, and far more easy, to suppose that Nature--her harmony and intelligence--have existed eternally, than it is to suppose a time when boundless matter was not in being; and that it derived its existence from an immaterial personage, of whom the mind cannot form the slightest conception? As material Nature is the infinite Being, it cannot be an effect; it is the principle of principles, whose innate energies produce within itself the eternal routine of cause and effect.* Of this necessitated process ad infinitum, man cannot know or describe even the surface; yet has the folly to pretend to look beyond the boundless plenum!

* To become a Materialist under existing modes of education,
is no easy attainment; it is the fruit of much impartial
research and knowledge, arising from independent and
fearless thought.

MOD.--But may not such an infinite spiritual power as the Platonists, and after them the Christians, figured to themselves, exist and rule the universe, although the mind of man can form no definite idea of this Being?

LUCIAN.--Man has nothing to do with that which he can neither know nor comprehend;* and it is impossible for him to believe in that which is beyond his comprehension. Materialists maintain the existence of an all-ruling POWER; but every attempt to personify that Power,--and all pretensions to any knowledge of it beyond that which is gathered from the process of Nature, in her works, they hold as deceitful and pernicious; regarding all pretended revelations said to be supernaturally made to man, as the work of the most dangerous and wicked impostors: and their revelations as the direst curses that were ever entailed upon mankind. It would be a perversion of terms to speak of more than one infinite Being: whether then is it most rational to suppose it to be that which we know to exist, or that which we do not know** to exist? So far is it from being difficult to suppose the eternity of matter, it is hardly possible to imagine anything but its eternity. Previous to what you call its creation by your immaterial artificer, was he a vacuum living in a vacuum?*** As the Christian's definition of his deity confounds all language, it is its own best refutation. With a face of gravity, he talks of his body spiritual that has no body; an incorporeal something that is essentially nothing; an immaterial substance that is non-substantial; and though this body is immaterial, it possesses the form and likeness, together with the bodily members, of a man! These are the pestilent offspring of theology--your distracting chimeras, which

"Turns them to a shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

* Man neither can nor ought to have anything to do with that
which is confessedly inconceivable; if he pretends to know
or say anything of such a being, he immediately falls into
contradictions. When did a theologian understand himself
when speaking of his deity or deities?--Never.

** We have five witnesses in favor of the existence of
matter, viz., seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and
tasting; but where is the proof of the existence of anything
that is immaterial? It is fancy alone that creates such a
chimera.

*** The old fact that nature abhors a vacuum is still
unrefuted; we may indeed go farther and say that she will
not allow it, for the art of man has never produced a space
where there was nothing.

"Your imagination bodies forth
In forms of things unknown;--"

Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term God was used only as being expressive of an effect, whose cause is Nature.

MOD.--Men are so accustomed to trace and find the origin of artificial objects, that a supposed analogy readily presents itself, that matter must have had an origin also; and, backed by superstition, they will not give up their "Great First Cause."

LUCIAN.--Forgetting that their "Great First Cause" stands equally in need of a cause. None of the phaenomena of Nature prove, but all disclaim a first cause. Causes and effects have ever moved in an eternal circle; and that which is an effect at one time becomes a cause at another, and vice versa. Theology has taught man to reject that which is easy and rational, and blinded him to the thousand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when neither time* nor matter existed, contrasted with the simple truth that matter is self-existent. This is a proposition too plain and reasonable to answer the deceptive ends of the traders in that pseudo science.

MOD.--If, as you say, no power ever did, or can create matter, there are at least an endless series of changes--of new modes or forms of beings which it unceasingly assumes, having the appearance of creation. All this seems to require intelligence and a directing hand.

LUCIAN.--Why may not this directing hand be the essential energies of matter alone, of which motion is the chief; for without it no change whatever can take place? The word creation has no proper meaning except when applied to these new combinations, and ever-varying forms. The universe consists of infinitely-derived, and dependent modes of beings; each of which owes its existence to the power and efficacy of the one that immediately preceded it, in an infinite series of successions, without a beginning, or original.**

* The theologist makes god say, "before time was, I was."

** According to Hobbes, "God is almighty matter."

Existence still maintains existences,
And nought begins where no existence is.

MOD.--The intercirculation* of the parts of matter, and its unceasing changes into new states of being, in form and substance, seem to reveal the mystery of transubstantiation, which, if I mistake not, was one of the attributes ascribed to deity, long before it was adopted as a dogma of Christianity.

LUCIAN.--Like everything else in our Christian fabrication, transubstantiation was taken from the esoteric doctrines of the Gentiles, where it was allegorised in the person of Proteus, who, according to the poets, was Neptune's herdsman; and whose name properly signifies primary, or oldest, meaning that he represented the eternal nature of matter; and his changeableness was expressive of the endless operations, new modes and combinations thereof, wrought chiefly in a fluid state by the perpetual motion** of the sea (Neptune), and the other elements. He was said to take all kinds of shapes and disguises, turning himself into monstrous animals, fire, water, etc., denoting that in him were personified the continually varying forms of matter.*** He was called the servant of Neptune, and said to reside in a cave, meaning the apparent concavity of the heavens. Time, matter and motion form the only eternal Trinity and Unity.

* The perpetual change of form produced by this
intercirculation in the elements of matter, was called by
the Greeks Omoosia or Omousia. This mutual action is
universal; and is proved even in "the interchange of the
material of light between globe and globe in the solar
system; and from the fixed stars, through the medium of some
gaseous principle of matter, in the highest state of
rarefaction." All is matter, and matter is all.

** It is only by motion that we exist, or even known that we
exist. A dead animal begets motion of itself.

*** Empedocles says:--"Those are infants or short-sighted
persons with very contracted understandings, who imagine
that anything is born which did not exist before; or that
anything can be totally annihilated."

MOD.--The learned amongst the Christian priesthood, against their private convictions, are under the necessity of supporting the dogma of creation; because the giving up of that point would destroy the foundation of their system; but many of them have no objection to allow the eternity of time.

LUCIAN.--During which time, as has already been observed, their god, being immaterial, was the vacuum inhabitant of a vacuum! Another plunge into absurdity. The pretended creations and false revelations inculcated by theology, have invariably operated to suppress or cripple the sciences; particularly those of astronomy and geology. Sacerdotal deception un-blushingly tells us that, something less than six thousand years ago, there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, no matter of any kind! By the invention of this tremendous absurdity, priestcraft has had the audacity to circumscribe within the comparative period of a moment, the existence of even Nature herself; and as nothing is too gross for unthinking ignorance, even this greatest of all monstrosities goes down with the credulous herd of mankind, who dare to look at nothing but through the spectacles of this "science of god."

MOD.--What proof have we that this globe has been in being longer than the period assigned for it by the Jewish and Christian priesthoods?

LUCIAN.--There are innumerable astronomical and geological facts which prove the existence of this earth for millions of years.* By a change so wonderfully slow as to require perhaps thousands of centuries to bring it round, the surface of this globe is so completely altered towards the sun, that the frigid zones become the torrid, and _vice versa_, in succession. The remains of tropical animals have been found at the estuaries of the Oby and Lena, and even in more northern latitudes. Petrified crocodiles have been found in Derbyshire, at the depth of eighty-five fathoms; which proves that the land called England enjoyed a tropical sun, in antiquity so remote as to show in a striking light, the moment sand-glass--or, if you please, the perfect nothingness--of all human chronology.

MOD.--It must be allowed that the Bible cosmogony and its stories about deity, origin of man, etc., appear puerile, contradictory, and irrational, unless they can be resolved into planetary allegories. But in regard to the creation of matter, these Jew books are not so absurd as to affirm that it was done out of nothing; that was a discovery made by Christianity. The Jewish creation is a mere copy of cosmogonies of eastern countries, all of whom, China excepted, pretend to account for the origin of things.

LUCIAN.--We had everything from the east.* The Bible makers compiled out of any oriental legends, or shreds of Pagan writings they could find; and from ignorance, turned the sublime allegories having allusion to the planets, into vague unmeaning narrative and anecdote. Even Druidism, which, like primitive Christianity, was concealed sun worship,** travelled to us from the east; and there is abundant reason to believe that priestcraft had reached the highest perfection in India, some fifty thousand years before the Jewish superstition existed. In western Asia and Europe, the usual combination of crafts had robbed man of his natural liberty, enslaved his mind, and eaten up the fruits of his industry; but in Hindustan, the consummate subtlety, and all-subduing art of the priest, has, by an utter annihilation of mind, reduced certain castes of the Hindus far below the condition of the vilest animal on earth, and with a fiendish influence, the most astonishing, it stimulates other castes to actions at which Nature stands horrified.

* Christianism stole its materials in the east--deceived the
west, and now, in its purloined robes and oriental missions,
"it would retrace its steps, and deceive the world."

** "In Druidism, as in the most ancient religions, the
mythos in all being perfectly the same, it was required of
the votaries, that all prayers for good, as well as
invocations of curses, should be addressed to the sun, under
the name of Jupiter. In praying for blessings, they went
round the stone, or other object, according to the course of
the sun; and vice versa in the invocation of curses. These
imprecations are very numerous in those solar hymns, called
the psalms of David."

The Christian priestcraft, even in the eleventh century, when ignorance and tyranny had raised it to its zenith of power and glory, was but a novice compared with the subtle perfection of that of India. And it was no doubt the complete success of this mind-enslaving delusion in the east, which recommended and caused its adoption in the west; for with a variation in names, it is identically the same astro-fable everywhere.*

* Most of the old churches on the continent, as has
elsewhere been observed, show that both the virgin and her
son were introduced into Europe, as black Gentoos.